Fabric
by janya.wrote.nightrose
Summary: Fate wove his thread for a long time alone." The story of the Twilight Saga from afar, as told by Fate. One-shot.


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Fabric

Fate wove his thread alone for a long time.

Well, technically she wasn't actually Fate. She was Fate's secretary's junior assistant. She was so low in the organization that she was unlikely to even touch the loom before it rotted. She didn't even get a _name. _They designated her as Assistant 6B.

But she knew, she _knew, _that she was meant to get the head position. She could hear the threads singing to her as she sat in her dim little office and tried to get comfortable on the chair so she could file paperwork for the higher-ups.

She was bringing the boss her morning cup of tea the day it began. Fate herself was getting old, and there were rumors going around that she'd actually retire soon, passing the responsibility of spinning the thread of worlds together to some younger, talented person.

That particular day, Fate's granddaughter was in a ballet recital. And she decided to take off early. Assistant 6B didn't mind. She stayed in the room, just looking at the plain wooden frame of Fate's loom, as the rest of her coworkers filed out of the building, as the sun went down and they returned to their evening activities.

6B was alone with the thread of the universe in a little basket in the corner. Quietly, she sat down on the weathered stool. She looked at the intricate fabric, each thread a whole life. One in particular caught her eye. It was a brilliant royal blue. Softly, she touched it. And it _sung _to her.

She knew its whole story. The face of the man it belonged to appeared in her eyes.

He was beautiful. His hair was blonde, shining like spun gold, and his eyes were red as blood.

That wasn't right. They didn't belong that color. She could sense it didn't match the tenor of the thread. Carefully, she pulled at it a little, grabbing a narrow piece of twine (visions of leaping deer appeared when she touched that one) and spinning it around the dark blue thread.

She smiled as she saw the beautiful man change while she spun on the years. Yes. As she ran her hand along his thread, she saw the change quite clearly. His eyes went from blood red to gold, in but a year or so. And that clearer color they stayed.

For a long time, she wove his thread alone.

It wouldn't always be that way. In fact, she already knew how the story had to end. She could see the five twined pairs spinning off into eternity. Gently, she stroked a finger along them, just to test herself.

The beautiful man, the gentle one she saw at the beginning, would be spun with an even softer thread. It appeared to be made of a soft cotton, with pale wisps dancing from the edges, and it was a light red. Fiery, passionate, yes, but also kind and maternal.

When she touched the thread, she could see the woman it was, her eyes blue at this point in time, her young face smiling. It would be a while before she was golden and eternal too.

She saw the other faces, but knew it was not yet time for them. She had to spin the lonely blue for a while yet.

He touched the three dark grey threads that had been on the frame since nearly the beginning. For a while, he even twined with one of them. But it was not his place. She wove him away from there. It was not the path that would lead the ten together, and it was vitally important, not just to them, but to the entire fabric of the universe, that they remain so eternally.

She could see how the ten were bound into five, then into one great rope of lives, and she knew that would be necessary later… much later, to even their immortal eyes. Not long, as she saw it. But she saw eternity through the tips of her fingers. Forever was exactly as long as she willed it to be.

The power was intoxicating, but the duty even more so. It was rapturous to do this work and do it _right, _to create with delicate fingers the beauty of their joined forever.

Lovely.

There it was! Finally, after all those years of lonesomeness for that poor navy thread, his pale mate finally appeared. And what a perfect complement she was, too. 6B allowed herself a moment to marvel at how beautiful they look together before she realizes something. The color of the woman was just a little darker by the end.

It was not yet time for twining.

Reluctantly, she released their burgeoning connection. For several inches, she wove on, before plucking a bright golden thread, strong and dark in its shining color, from the masses. It was thin and flickering at that point. When she touched it, she saw the dying boy in his hospital bed.

That can't be permitted. She knows he must be part of the final connection. So she grabbed the navy thread and pulls it directly over the brighter gold. Immediately, the fading gold is stronger, shining even brighter with the force of the change. The material changes from fragile humanity to something rugged, solid. 6B was never good with identifying fabrics.

But she's good at this.

The two men twined loosely, orbiting around each other, a small family. There was an incompleteness there, but nonetheless they were happier than could be expected. She was glad of that much.

She turned her attention to the light red. She sees the darkness that she must spin in. It's a shame, that the bright clarity of that pale color must be dampened by pain. But she does what's required.

The dark man was merely a shadow, really. He was an almost motivationless evil, cruel for cruelty's sake. But he did something else important. Between his darkness and her light, there was another thread, a spurt of light green, growing within the soft red.

She touched the woman and saw her growing stomach, her resolution as she ran. 6B allowed her to break the ties with darkness. It's the right thing for the path.

And the child was born, but that thread had to be snipped. The shears were heavy in 6B's hand as she pulled them from the basked and stopped that small life.

The woman fell.

Swiftly, she pulled apart the gold and blue threads. The blue dove, swiftly, to catch the light red woman, and they twine at last.

Perfect. One down, four two go. Unfortunately, that poor golden boy will not be next. For a while, he left the euphoric pair, but then he returned to orbit them. The crimson of blood did not taint his brightness for long, but it left a shadow.

He will need it.

Every one of the experiences she puts them through guide them, in the end, to where they must go. She has so little choice in pushing them through Fate's stolen fabric.

An angel descended next. Her thread was golden, just like the boy's, though it was delicate gossamer rather than the almost-steel consistency he possesses. She was beautiful, and passionate, and stubborn, just like him.

A perfect match, the wise man thought. He was wrong.

The beautiful boy wasn't patient enough to wear through the blood and blackness she wove into the angel's past. She saw the shadow of that pain when she touched the slender thread, and almost wept with the intensity of her grief.

She was glad when the angel stalked toward the dark threads, and took great pleasure in snipping them, one by one.

That too was as it had to be. If the monsters lived, there was no way the beauty could be strong enough to find him, her other half, to twine with him as she must.

So the threads broke, and 6B smiled. Time spun on.

The eldest, the blue man, and his pale red wife, were entirely contained in their own joy. The golden boy was lost in loneliness. His sister is empty with her revenge completed.

Until, one day, she hungered (more brown threads, undyed, broken with little thought for their animal lives) and found something other than dinner before her.

His thread was a brighter, clearer brown than the animals, but still an earthy shade. It was strong and thick, like leather almost, and it wound toward the gossamer eagerly.

She brushed her hand over it and smiled. A beautiful picture appeared, of the man, his muscles bulging, and the golden girl, hand in hand.

They twined after a few months of darkness. This pair spun ever closer into the fabric of the family. Since she, too, was paired, the resentment she felt for the happy parents disappeared.

Four happy endings.

6B watched as gold and leather, pale red and dark blue, formed a tight knot of contentment. The boy spun around the edges, orbiting them, but disconnected.

She sighed. It was sad to watch his loneliness. But there was another lonely one to attend to beforehand.

Red. A dark crimson bright as blood. That was the color it appeared. But that's not what it is. She couldn't imagine it could be the nature of it, not when she touched the stained thread and saw the ethereal beauty of the man—and his goodness, the way he hid his red eyes in shame, tried to stop the strength of his need.

Yes, when she looked deeper, she could see that wasn't the original color. He was light orange, so pale a color that it was almost white. The blood red he'd been soaked in for so long had diluted his color, changed him.

But it was time for that change to be reversed. There was a clear thread, spun almost out of nowhere, no, out of blackness, out of nothing, and it was exactly what he needed.

The pale skinned, dark haired girl seemed to almost guide her own thread, impossible though that was. Fate controlled all, and the people she spun had no effect on the result. She knew that quite well. The little vampire had something in common with Fate, perhaps making her a bit more able to have _some_ control.

She did not touch the fabric, but she saw it. Though she could not change the weave, she traced along the threads with as much ease as 6B or presumably Fate herself. She knew where she was headed, she saw the twine that must become, and she sought out the stained man. She knew she had to purge his marks.

It was quite a relief not to have to interfere, for once. The girl wove her clarity and purity into the man's dark red with ease.

She handled things herself, so 6B turned her attention elsewhere.

Specifically, to the wolves. Not true _were_wolves. It was more appropriate to call them by the name of the species they became. They were not half and half. They were sometimes one and sometimes the other, but always fully.

At this point, bloodshed seemed to threaten. The family's twine wore against the equally strong knot of the pack. But she pulled the royal blue of the wise leader against the Alpha, and formed a truce.

That was a relief As time wore on, and they found the twined skein of the others, his stains began to wear off. Slowly, the weight of lives taken disappeared in the kindness of his heart and the strength of love.

It was a pleasure to observe, even from this distance. She smiled as they twisted perfectly into the familial fabric.

For a while, that was simply how it wore on. She pitied the disconnect between the boy and the family. He was _so _very alone, especially at night, when the façade could disappear, and it was simply true love and eternity for the rest of them… and nothingness for him.

She skipped her fingers down. Little needed to happen, it was merely the pattern of years, crossing at regular intervals. She brought another family, similar to them, into their path, every so often. They'd be important later.

And the years wore on.

Finally, _finally, _an innocuous-looking cream-colored thread appeared, mixing an earth-toned man and a woman as bright as the sun. And she changed everything.

For a while, she lived her separate life. It was an impatient, though comparatively brief, seventeen years. And then the second-to-last catalyst came.

The vivid red-orange of her mother's thread split from where they were bound together. Instead, she fixed on an altogether unremarkable man—the image of them, when 6B touched their threads, was one of them hand-in-hand. The woman wore a face of perfect contentment, no, radiant joy. The man looked happy, in a surprised way.

But that was all well. Because it sent the pale thread, the pretty girl with the innocent face, towards her father.

Towards her Fate.

She smiled, grinned, in the passion of her creativity, and looped the lonely gold over her pale cream.

It was a struggle. For a while it seemed as though the spinning boy might sink his razor teeth into the throat as pale as her life's thread, cutting them both.

But that wasn't the way it worked. Not at all.

They were incredibly tightly bound. It was beautiful.

Other dangers loomed, dark black and wild red, but their love conquered the struggles with ease. Happiness seemed inevitable.

And then the idiot went and _left_ her. 6B was quite put out with him, as the thread practically leapt from her sure but inexperienced hands in its struggle to do what it felt it had to. She followed the music of the weaving, the natural course of the art, though her mind rebelled. This was a creation of instinct, and so she had little choice but to draw the twined family in three directions.

The golden boy went off alone, to sulk in the darkness somewhere or hunt down the traces of old enemies, crossing occasionally with the crimson huntress. It didn't matter much to either he or 6B.

The family reluctantly went on with their lives.

And the ivory girl was desperately, desperately alone.

It was painful, the way the color changed visibly, not darkening, but _dulling, _losing the pearly purity of its sheen, turning dull from all the suffering.

Eventually, a brown-red thread, a wolf, crossed her path, and where the two overlapped the pain stopped. But only for that thread-thin span of time, no longer.

6B sighed. And then gasped, as events began to change, as she saw a strong image from the place where her finger's edge brushed against the dimming thread.

The girl's long brown hair blew out behind her, and she poised to jump.

Swiftly, before anything could change, the red-brown boy the dying girl had begun to twine with in her powerlessness swooped in to save her, 6B's right hand deftly maneuvering him. Her left hand reached out, pulling the clear thread of the seer out of her family's knot.

Away from her love, but she couldn't think about that now. They had a happy ending to save.

As the gold boy, dim as his love, moved towards the paths of those three grey "friends" his father had, his sister and the girl he'd left behind renewed their friendship-bond and spun back towards him.

Everything was healed, after a while.

And then there was another problem. Not just the red warning on the horizon, the revenge-obsessed lonesome girl. 6B could see where her thread would be snipped by a deft golden hand.

No, it was the fact that in the absence of her truest love, the cream thread was twined doubly, and almost as tight, with the wolf.

That wasn't right, but the bond's couldn't be undone.

The choice was made, though. And fortunately, it was the right one. The golden boy and the pale girl united, though some tufts of her thread still longed for another.

That other was very, _very _alone. 6B wept for him a little as she worked. But his time was not far away.

Not at all.

And there. As a beautiful wedding transpired, as the almost-complete family bound themselves in to await eternity, something happened.

Before the mother herself knew about it, 6B could see the smaller thread of the impossible baby begin to grow. And she could see as it spun, away from the twine of its parents and into the arms that waited for it, even though they did not yet expect such a thing.

A girl, 6B assumed. She could see the color, after a short while, a rich, pure, jade green. A beautiful color. Almost as beautiful as the girl she saw when she laid her hand on the thread.

The child was _impossibly _adorable. It made her long for the ability to have children, though that was not an ability of her kind, except for the highest of them. Fate had daughters, but 6B would never.

And this one was the crown of them all. As the cream thread she was a part of flickered, the green grew stronger, beginning to flash outside of its mother. The bond of the dying girl switched from gold to gold, from the father of her child to the sister-in-law she trusted to protect it.

The wolf returned, and watched her die, hate in his bitter heart. Yet nothing but pity could be felt for him, so deep was his pain. The two men who twined to the cream thread were breaking within, watching her child destroy her from the inside out.

And then the birth came.

Jade green shone alone, for the first time. A change came upon the mother. She twined again with the man she loved most of all, and her shining thread grew brighter.

The lonely wolf ached with furious loneliness. 6B smiled a little at the irony and nudged him along to where he belonged.

Green and brown met, and instantly he surrounded her.

"Five for five," a voice came from behind 6B. She spun around and saw the kind and wizened face of Fate. "Not bad for a beginner."

She had been utterly engrossed in the work. She had no idea how long Fate had been watching her, and abruptly she was terrified. This was so _deeply _against the rules. "I…"

"No excuses, child." The old, old woman touched her shoulder. "You have a great gift."

"Thank you." Solemnly, she accepted the compliment, because she knew it to be the truth. This is what she was meant for.

"And I _am _getting old. Let me see… how about this for a challenge, young one? If you can get them through to the end of this strand, you get the job?"

Breathlessly, "Thank you." It was the chance she'd never hoped to have. And though she saw trouble ahead, the fabric leading her fingers in twisted directions, she knew she could pull them through. The path of forever would lead her in weaving them, and she had but to follow.

She sat down and turned to her work.

Fate wove their threads together for a long time.

Forever, in fact.

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